It’s time to get really personal and talk about something I’ve never really talked about on my blog, but thought about countless times. Actually I didn’t even know if I would post this at first, but I went ahead and wrote it to see how I felt about it.
Like all women, I am always battling the desire to be thinner, but also to do it with a good balance of exercise, healthy eating and knowing when it’s really okay to go ahead and treat myself. Since I came overseas, this balance has been really hard for me to keep. In the States it was much easier. But this new lifestyle threw me into a tailspin and I just haven’t been able to get my head above water since I got here. But interestingly enough, that very thing, water, helped me to get out of that tailspin and bring balance back to the health part of my life.
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| Before and After -12lbs |
This spring I was at an all-time low, or you could say high, since I arrived here. I had injured my leg, and I’m not even sure how it happened or when it will go away, but I am sure of one thing, swimming is the only thing that helps. Back to the injury, a few months into it I had packed on about 8 pounds on top of the 15 pounds I had packed on in the past three and a half years since we had been here! I was so ashamed of the way my body had become. I felt so lazy because every time I tried to exercise my leg would get worse and I just could not get myself disciplined with food unless I was exercising.
My physical therapist told me that swimming could help my leg, so I started to gradually go swimming. At first it was 2-3 times a week and eventually five times a week through which it grew into a passion! I really fell in love with it, and still it is the only thing that helps my leg!
Swimming wasn’t enough at first, but it helped me in disciplining my eating, I started to count my calories after seeing a photo of myself taken by a guy on our team who said it looked normal, while I was thinking “Is that really me?” Anyhow, somehow it always starts with a photo right? I had been finding most photos just downright depressing at that time.
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| One of the said photos |
I wish I had that photo, but I don’t, he deleted it quickly after he saw how disturbed I was by it. I only had a photo that I had taken the summer before when I was actually a little bit thinner than I was earlier this year. I was just too ashamed to take a before photo, and to be honest, I didn’t know if there would be an after. Until a few weeks into it when I realized I was super determined, but it was already too late, I had lost five pounds within just a few weeks.
It’s taken me a bit longer as I continue to lose the rest. So far it’s a total of 16 pounds, but I know that my body is changing so much because of the swimming. I took this after photo when I had lost 12 pounds. It’s been a while and I’ve only lost four more pounds since then, which means I am ten pounds from my goal. I am not as concerned about the numbers as I was to begin with because I realize that my body is changing, and as they say muscle weighs more than fat.
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| Before and After -16lbs |
I know that this may seem irrelevant to life overseas, but it’s been a big part of MY journey, and finding swimming as a form of exercise and even a way to get out and be a part of the community has transformed the way I look at life here. Also, being able to sustain a healthy lifestyle in this country is very important to me. That takes a lot of discipline and work when you develop a love for baking and work in a cafe with lots of sweets around all the time and part of your job is to taste those things. I found that counting calories worked best for me because I can’t always avoid sweets, but I can make changes elsewhere. So that really transformed the way that I looked at food.
I am just so grateful because I know that this is something that Papa is doing in my life. It’s not just me. I felt it at the beginning and I know it because I feel like I was made to be a swimmer. Not a pro or anything. But I think He just knew that I would love being in the water and that it would just be an all around great and healthy thing for me.
I do hope that this mystery injury goes away soon, but I am so grateful that it drew me toward swimming and ultimately to gaining and hopefully sustaining a healthy lifestyle in the country that I am in.
